About My Steampunk, Anime, and Goth Jewelry

I started as a jeweler doing
glass bead flameworking and
metal casting,
and I am still working in these areas.
More recently, however, much of my work has been directed toward making
"costume" jewelry based around assembled components
(with sometimes significant additional hand-work!)
These pieces fit well with the steampunk way of life
(which is our own),
and also at times appeal to the goth and anime cultures.

"Steampunk" is a contemporary cultural movement
dedicated to fusing a 19th-century design aesthetic
with a high-tech engineering counterculture.
Imagine what the world might be like today if
Charles Babbage really had built a working computer
in the 1820s.

Steampunk has roots in speculative fiction,
and draws together a diverse group of people from
maker,
goth, historical re-enactor, fashion, music,
and other communities.
It can be anything from gaslight romance to gritty punk.
It can never be defined precisely,
because we're making it up as we go along.

Like so many, we have discovered that this apparently new
category, "steampunk," just gives a name to the kind of life
we've been trying to live all along.

We are not goths.
Yet we are outsiders,
even in this culture which was supposed to be our own,
and therefore have a great sympathy for the goth perspective.
There is also a significant crossover between goth and
steampunk.
Some of my pieces will appeal to goths, some will not.

Anime, of course, is Japanese animated film and its derivatives.
My work is not specifically "anime"
(nor could it be, as most anime
is created around licensed properties).
Nonetheless, many of my pieces fit the anime aesthetic well.

(Shown at right: my "New England Graveyard" earrings.
This is an original concept, design and name of mine.)